If you’re anything like me, you’re impatiently counting down the days until The Walking Dead returns to AMC in October. While there’s nothing we can do to speed up the time, there is something else Walking Dead related that you can occupy yourself with while you wait.
AMC has announced that prequel show Fear The Walking Dead has been picked up for two seasons, with the pilot episode set to premiere sometime this summer. But what’s this show going to entail? There aren’t a ton of details available but we’ve gathered everything we know here for your convenience.
What time period will the show be set in? How did the zombie apocalypse originate?
While The Walking Dead does an excellent job of dodging plot holes, there are two serious questions that have never been answered by the show. What exactly went down at the start of the apocalypse, and what caused it to happen?
In The Walking Dead‘s pilot episode “Days Gone Bye”, we were introduced to series protagonist Rick Grimes and have witnessed the zombie apocalypse unfold through his eyes. But Rick was comatose when the outbreak started and we’ve never really had a concrete idea of how much time elapsed between the crap hitting the fan and Rick waking up to a world plunged into Hell, or exactly what started the epidemic in the first place.
These burning questions are finally going to be answered with Fear The Walking Dead, as we’ll at last get to see humankind’s reaction to the initial outbreak, the attempts to contain it and how the world ended up in the ravaged state that it was in when Rick came out of his coma.
Will the show have any relation to the Walking Dead comic series?
Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead comics, confirmed that the companion series will be unrelated to the comics.
This is a huge benefit to Fear The Walking Dead, as the show will have complete freedom to innovate and improvise. One of the things that has always impressed me about The Walking Dead on AMC is how faithful the producers have managed to stay to the comics, even while taking liberties with particular characters and storylines.
The beauty of being unrelated to the comic books is that the companion series will have no pre-existing storylines or reading material to pigeonhole it. Given its status as a prequel, it also won’t have to worry about trying to tie in characters from the principle show that have already had five years and change to grow and develop.
Fear The Walking Dead will be a free-roaming beast left entirely to its own devices and that’s exactly why it’s going to be such a hit.
Who are the series protagonists?
Fear The Walking Dead is going to be based around a male retired teacher named Cliff Curtis and a female guidance counselor named Kim Dickens. Here’s a quick synopses of their characters from the Walking Dead wiki database:
Cliff Curtis, played by Sean Cabrera. A Latino male in his early 40s, Sean is a good man, a teacher, trying to do right by everyone in his life.
Kim Dickens, played by Nancy Tompkins. “The female lead”. A thirty-something single mom to two kids, Nancy looks like the girl next door, but there’s an edge to her.
There are also claims that the pilot script contains a role for a character who appeared briefly during a key season one episode.
Where will the show take place?
Fear The Walking Dead is going to take place in Los Angeles, California.
The obvious endgame with the location choice was to pick something far off and unrelated to the familiar southern locale that fans of The Walking Dead are familiar with. The setting of LA is intriguing, since we haven’t had a chance to see the fallout from the outbreak outside of Georgia, Virginia and now 50 miles or so out from Washington, D.C.
The West Coast setting will offer something completely different. Plus, who doesn’t want to see a buttload of Hollywood zombie cameos? I’d personally love to see someone take an axe to an undead M. Night Shyamalan, but I won’t hold my breath.
Are there any trailers we can watch?
As I said before, there isn’t much, but there is a 16 second teaser trailer, appropriately titled “Good Morning, Los Angeles”. Check it out below:
Robert Kirkman wrote the comics. The first show was good b/c of his storytelling. Why would you think going off his script will somehow make the show better? The show was specifically made b/c of Robert Kirkland. It’s his story. Start a show not based off a book or graphic novel and watch how far it gets. Jesus Christ.